{"id":4434,"date":"2008-03-08T09:56:09","date_gmt":"2008-03-08T13:56:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/?p=4434"},"modified":"2008-03-08T09:59:01","modified_gmt":"2008-03-08T13:59:01","slug":"nature-and-doing-good","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/2008\/03\/nature-and-doing-good\/","title":{"rendered":"Nature and Doing Good"},"content":{"rendered":"

Among my many other vices, I like to read poetry. Mainly, I just leaf through The Oxford Book of English Verse<\/i>, but lately I have been on a Wordsworth kick. He is a good early-morning-walk-with-your-dog-along-the-James-River kind of poet, and anyone who loved Milton as much as he did can’t be all bad. I have to confess, sometimes, however, that I find myself a bit skeptical. Consider the following lines from “Tintern Abbey.”* The speaker, after a long absence, has returned a beloved nature spot and now expatiates on what the memories of that spot — and the feelings it provoked — meant while he was elsewhere:<\/p>\n

. . . . Though absent long,
\nThese forms of beauty have not been to me,
\nAs is the landscape to a blind man’s eye:
\nBut oft, in lonely rooms, and mid the din
\nOf towns and cities, I have owed to them,
\nIn hours of weariness, sensations sweet,
\nFelt in the blood, and felt along the heart,
\nAnd passing even into my purer mind
\nWith tranquil restoration: – feelings too
\nOf unremembered pleasure; such, perhaps,
\nAs my have had no trivial influence
\nOn that best portion of a good man’s life;
\nHis little, nameless, unremembered acts
\nOf kindness and of love.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It is the claim in the last few lines that interests me. Wordsworth seems to suggest that experiencing nature — particularly in rapturous and self-forgetful yet exquisitely self-conscious way that he favors — makes one a more moral person. There is something about the memory of nature that leads our souls to “little, nameless, unremembered acts\/ Of kindness and love.” Do we think that this is right? Does tramping through woods, mountains, or deserts really make you a better person? I’ve seen versions of this claim before, but I confess that I tend to associate it with a certain kind of Birkenstock-wearing self-righteousness that I find particularly annoying. On the other hand, I can buy into a theology of nature that sees its beauty as a reflection of the love of God, and it is not unreasonable to suppose that the memory of such love would make one a better person. Hmmmm….<\/p>\n

*The full title is “Lines Written a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey On Revisiting the Banks of the Wye During a Tour, July 13, 1798.” Writer of snappy titles, Wordsworth was not.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Among my many other vices, I like to read poetry.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4434","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-corn"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4434","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4434"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4434\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4434"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4434"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4434"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}